The Mexican newspaper, El Milenio, reports today that two U.S. officials, Under Secretary of State for Latin America, Arturo Valenzuela, and "Drug Czar" Gil Kerlikowske "clarified" Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments yesterday before the Council on Foreign Affairs, that Mexico's drug war was looking more and more like a Columbian type insurgency.
Both "clarifications" came during speeches at the same conference. Valenzuela is quoted as saying, (translated from the Milenio Spanish report) "not to misunderstand" the comment made by his boss at a conference Wednesday on foreign policy and said the United States does not consider that any possible "insurgency" in Mexico has political connotations. "The term insurgency is not being used in the same sense as the Colombian insurgency, it is not a political upheaval within society that is trying to takeover the state," Valenzuela said.
Kerlikowske is quoted as saying, we need to be "very careful" with the use of the term "insurgency". The fact that there have been some car bombs is something causing "concern", but "that does not translate automatically to insurgency."
We have not yet seen similar reports in the U.S. press.
Spanish original is at Milenio
The MexicoBlog of the Americas Program, a fiscally sponsored program of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is written by Laura Carlsen. I monitor and analyze international press on Mexico, with a focus on security, immigration, human rights and social movements for peace and justice, from a feminist perspective. And sometimes I simply muse.
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